This is beautifully written and so true even 7 years later. This is my heart.
Elisabeth Elliott has been widowed twice at different stages of her life.
The Elisabeth Elliott Newsletter
May/June 2003
To A New Widow
Dearest one:
I know the proportion of that pain, and there is no minimizing it here and now. I also know the truth of 2 Corinthians 4:14, “These little troubles (which are really so transitory) are winning for us a permanent, glorious and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain.” The bigger our pain now, the bigger that “weight of glory” will be. It’s mysterious, it’s unimaginable, but it’s going to be, and for that we give thanks.
You are alone now. You go to bed alone, you are having to learn to say “I” instead of “we”, you find yourself catching your breath as you turn to say something to the man who isn’t there, you put off a decision until he gets home to help you make it, and then you know, with a pang, that you’ll have to make it by yourself.
The children come with needs, needs that Daddy could meet, but Daddy won’t be there—today or tomorrow, or ever again, so there you are. You open a drawer, and you find a book his hands have handled, you come across his handwriting (so very personal a sign of the man), you see his shoes with the shape of his feet which you know so well, and the sting of the arrow in your heart is not missed by Him who love us as no one else ever has.
He puts those tears into His bottle for He gave you the love that brings those tears and He made you so you could cry, and you cast it all on the Rock that never moves. You find everything else shaken, tottering, the mountains moved into the midst of the sea, the earth “roaring”, the things that seemed changeless all changed now, except for the Rock. He seems sometimes a very absent help in time of trouble, but He’s there. Be still, know that He’s still God, wait for Him.
I know how your memory goes over every inch of his body, for you loved every inch of it, and you remember just how it felt and the smell of him and the sound of his breathing and his voice and the taste of him, and each day you find it a little bit harder to remember just exactly how it was and you know you have forgotten some of it, and this, too is pain.
You don’t want anybody telling you that “time heals all things,” for you don’t in the least want to forget, not for a second. People will be very kind for quite a long time. They will remember, and their hearts will go out to you and they will be utterly at a loss to know how to look at you, what to say, how to keep you from talking about your husband. They don’t know how to cope with the emotion in themselves so they simply cannot imagine how you cope. They are not practiced in being open and honest with their true emotions, and at a time like this they are at a loss to know how to fake, although they feel that faking is what they ought to do. So you have to accept that and try to believe that all they want is to be kind, though they blunder at it most touchingly.
But after a while they will not remember much anymore, or they will assume you’ve “gotten over it,” and you will become a worse threat to them because they won’t know how in the world to fit you into their world. The couples who were your good friends will want to do things for you, but they won’t know how to do things for you, and finally, although they would hardly admit this to themselves, you become a burden, a nuisance, and a dangerous person to have around susceptible husbands. (I write this not so much from personal experience, since most of my first widowhood was spend in relative isolation from the civilized social scene, but from talking with others, and from observation).
You are a widow, a social misfit, not single, not married. You’ll find it hard, I think, to relate to single women again, but you can’t expect to be included in couples’ groups again either. Perhaps it’s cruel of me to tell you so much so soon, but then again perhaps, as it happens to you, it will be of some help to know that this is the way it is! And of course, to be able to accept things that can’t be changed is a mark of maturity.
There will be those who can “explain” to you God’s purposes in all of this. They’ll “see” what it’s supposed to mean for you. Don’t worry about them. They are blind. No explanation this side of Heaven can possibly cover the data. It’s imponderable, inexplicable, and far, far beyond any explanations. You have to cast all that nonsense on the Rock too.
Your ringing assertion of faith in God’s sovereign design was a great encouragement to me. He’s there, He’s God, He’s in charge, and we do not flounder around in a sea of pure chance. Our hope is “for that future day when God will resurrect His children. For on that day thorns and thistles, sin, death, and decay—the things that overcame the world against its will at God’s command—will all disappear, and the world around us will share in the glorious freedom from sin which God’s children enjoy” (Romans 8:19-20, Living Bible).
Ever so much love,
Elisabeth
